Murder Story of Druzhkovka Jews at the Druzhkovka Vocational-Technical School

B.M. Fialko lived on Kievskaya Street in Druzhkovka; he married in 1939. He had relatives in Yakovlivtsy, which had been part of the Jewish "Pale of Settlement" until the Revolution [of 1917].... In early December 1941, the policemen came to Fialko's residence and took him to the local commandant's office, where many Jews and Communists were already assembled. It was very frightening, but Boris Moiseevich did not get confused, and he found the Peretsmans, his uncle and aunt, among the arrestees. The Jews were forced to bring some of their possessions along with them. Fialko guessed what lay in store for them, although the Jews were told that they would be sent to work. He realized that they were going to their deaths. He saw with his own eyes a young pregnant woman who was about to give birth. When she did so, the policemen drowned the newborn in a chum bucket. Several hundred Jews were forced into the sports hall of the old vocational school building. It was a mass operation. Our countryman [Fialko] decided to try to outwit the guards. He asked for permission to go to the toilet – and, by the third time, while the guards were smoking, he thought to himself: "It's now or never." It was already dark, and he ran toward a nearby dump, which is currently the site of a gas-fitting plant. All the other Jews were murdered. Fialko escaped and hid in various villages.